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All posts for the month October, 2013

.. when you’re playing Tenebrous Form at superior), allies cannot block anymore? The text of the card specifically says that the opposing minions (without Obtenebration) must pay one blood to attempt to block. And because allies can only burn life, they’re prohibited from blocking this action.

Cunctator Motion — since January 9th, 1995
An ante is a forced bet in which each player places a card from his deck into the pot before the game begins. The player who ousts another players actually wins the forfeited card from the losing player. The concept was (as in Magic The Gathering) never really popular, and the concept was dropped very soon after the release of VtES. So cards relating to ante, as those three above were banned for this reason.

Madness of the Bard — since July 1st, 1999
The judgment of this card vary from “downright silly” to “very much fun“, but in the end it prevents most players from freely communicating to each other, which is one of the cornerstones of a multiplayer game.

Return to Innocence — since March 14th, 1999
A card which allows a vampire to bleed for 10+, is just too good for the game. In a typical tournament the comfort level in terms of having pool is something like 10-12. With that amount of pool you need two high-level bleed come through, but this requires considerable setup and/or amount of cards being played during these actions, or you need at least 3-4 Kine Resource Contested/Conservative Agitations, but this also needs some setup. With RtI you can just bleed with Daring the Dawn and the only thing you’ll have to worry about is bleed bounce.

Succubus Club — since January 1st, 2005
Mass trading resources, especially with the now defunct tournament rules about table-splitting (at least for practical purposes), this led to absurd situation. Players Bob and John made a table split deal, with one of the them having a Succubus Club in play. After the deal both trade regularly their whole set of resources of vampires, master cards and other permanents back and forth, until they succeed in having ousted the other players.

Kindred Restructure — since January 1st, 2005
The abusive technique for using Kindred Restructure (and to a lesser extent) Dramatic Upheaval was called VP Sniping. The player with the Kindred Restructure in hand would wait where some predator was in sure ousting range (i.e. down to less than 5 pool or something similar) for the next turn. Then the KR would be played, and his new player, while having done nothing all the while, ripped of the reward for ousting from the original player. Furthermore with Kindred Restructure this player could arrange the table in manner which was most suitable for him, e.g. having a weak predator or prey or both.But LSJ’s publicly stated reasoning for the ban was simpler – it gives a player two predators at the same time, their real predator and the guy who’s going to jump right in there. Which is pretty unfair.

Dramatic Upheaval — since January 1st, 2005
The same arguments as for Kindred Restructure applies to Dramatic Upheaval as well, but to only slightly lesser extent, since it allowed to change seats with one player only.

Edge Explosion — since January 1st, 2008
One of the driving engines of an Imbued deck, since it both allowed him to have a power for which he hasn’t had the appropriate Virtue, but may gain a Conviction for a successful action once each turn.

Memories of Mortality — since January 1st, 2008
Very powerful when playing an ally deck, not only wasn’t an opposing vampire with this card no longer allowed to block any ally, he couldn’t hurt him anymore and the card was hard to get rid off.

Protect Thine Own — since January 1st, 2008
This card provided a very cheap way to remove any non-Camarilla vampire, though it requires an IC member for using the card’s full effect.

Lilith’s Blessing — since April 22nd, 2013
This is the first (and only) promo card on the ban list. The card provided very easy (and repeatable) access to 3 blood, and is somewhat abusive when used with Villein (or Minion Tap with multiple master phase actions).

Stake — from January 9th, 1995 to March 14th, 1999
The cards were banned because the corner-case paralyzation rules which were dropped in VTES (as opposed to the Jyhad rules). Since extensive rewording would have been necessary the rules team decided to ban the cards. With the new wording of the VTES version of Wooden Stake and the Camarilla Edition (CE) version of Rowan Ring the paralyze mechanic was dropped and replaced by “send to torpor“, so the ban could be lifted after the new version had been released.

Monocle of Clarity — from January 9th, 1995 to January 1st, 2000(?)
The wording of Monocle of Clarity allowed easily to break the game, thus it was banned. For an example see the following thread. With the new wording of the CE version which limited the card’s functionality to the current game state, not a future one, the card was allowed again.

Here are the results of the “World is a Vampire” VtES Constructed tournament in Bochum, Germany which was played on October 26th, 2013 with 13 players attending. The tournament was taking place during the Spiel 2013 Game Fair in Essen nearby. The final standings after two rounds and the final were as follows:

Today the VEKN posted the latest “State of the VEKN” (as of October 2013):

Greetings fellow V:TES players,

As most of you may already know, I was recently elected Chairman of the V:EKN (with Antonio Cobo as my Vice Chairman) during the meeting of National Coordinators and Inner Circle members held on the 4th of October, 2013 in Stockholm.

In a moment, I will talk about some of my projects as Chairman, but first I want to thank Johannes Walch for his years of dedication to V:TES and especially for his enormous efforts to bring our beloved game back in print.

The month’s deck for September 2013 is the tournament winning deck “Tes une fille et tu n’as pas de shampoing” played by Jorge Delgado (ESP). The deck is a First Tradition deck, which chokes the table with 1st Traditions and then uses bleed actions and Parity Shift to oust. It is certainly not the first kind of this deck, but it’s the most aggressive, streamlined version with 60 cards only. Also quite interesting is the use of Tomb of Rameses III, which is used as crypt acceleration instead of Zillahs Valley. Zillahs Valley cannot be used in this deck effectively, since a lot of vampires are below capacity 8. Other versions (tournament winning decks) with 3 or more First Traditions are the decks played by Sergio Gracia, Tiago Brum and John Bell. On one hand these kind of decks are sort of anti-social (like the Reversal of Fortunes decks), because they’re preventing the other players to participate in the game, on the other hand they do speed up the table one way or another.

September 2013 was very busy with VtES tournaments, so there were plenty of candidates for the title Deck of the Month:

419 Operation by Bram van Stappen (BEL) — this was very close second as choice for the Deck of Month. Conceptually the combination of 419 Operation, Brainwash and Pentex is intriguing, but the deck will always have difficulties ousting it’s 2nd or even 3rd prey.

Guadedo Ghouls by Marcin Szybkowski (POL) — not only is the deck very streamlined with 10 D’habi Revenants, but it deviated from the traditional weenie Sabbat Tzimisce concept to a crypt Guadedo as star vampire.